What are facts about primary storage devices?

Answer 1

• Computers and servers all have a hard drive of some capacity and speed.

• Some camcorders and VHS machines make use of hard drive technology for the storage of data.

• Even calculators and cash registers can have a hard drive to store relatively permanent information that can be retrieved, changed, and stored again on the drive.

• Hard drives are used to store information and programs on computers, servers, camcorders, etc. even when the power is off.

• Hard drives each have their own capacity for storing digital data and a speed at which that data can be retrieved and stored. As technology has progressed, the size and speed of hard drives and their processors has increased exponentially.

• The size and speed of the hard drive in a system is directly proportional to the efficient working of that system. A larger hard drive with a faster processing speed will work more efficiently than a smaller, slower hard drive.

• Hard drives are infinitely re-writable with no residual "damage" to the hard disk itself, but it is possible, with the right technology to reconstruct information on a hard drive that has been wiped clean or over-written.

• Because of their reliance on magnetism to maintain and store information, static electricity can wipe out stored information. Magnets, when placed on or near a computer terminal, can also erase data that is stored on a hard drive.

• Because information stored on a hard drive is stored magnetically, all data on a drive can be rearranged, changed, and stored again with no damage to the disk itself. Information on the disk can be moved around without loss of data or disruption in efficiency of the system.

• Computers can also be attached to external hard drives for backup storage. Exernal hard drives can be attached to a system, interface with it, and then be removed and stored on ste or in another location for safety.

• Early electronic computers, developed around the 1940's, were the size of a large room and consumed huge amounts of electricity. They were vastly different to the modern computers we use today, especially when compared to small and portable laptop computers.

• Computers are programmed to carry out instructions. These instructions are usually very simple and require adding numbers together, moving data from one place to another etc.

• A computer program can include as little as a few instructions to upwards of millions of instructions depending on the complexity of the program. Modern applications such as word processors, Web Browsers and graphic editors take large teams of programmers a long time to complete.

• A computer's memory stores numbers in huge amounts of cells that are addressed and can be quickly accessed by the CPU to perform calculations. There are two main types of computer memory, ROM (read only memory) and RAM (random access memory). ROM contains pre-written software and data that the CPU can only read, while RAM can be accessed and written to at any time.

• Computers interact with a number of different I/O (input/output) devices to exchange information. These peripheral devices include the keyboard, mouse, display, hard drive, printer and more.

• Computers are used to help link the world in the form of networks. Networked computers allow users to share and exchange data that is stored in different locations. You may have heard of a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN) which connects areas of various sizes. The internet is a vast network of computers spanning the globe that allows users to access email, the World Wide Web and other applications.

• Although we normally think of computers as the ones we use in our everyday lives to surf the web, write documents etc, small computers are also embedded into other things such as mobile phones, toys, microwaves and MP3 players. We use computers all the time, often without even knowing it!